la belle dame (sans merci)
by MegaBadBunny
Summary: Rose and the metacrisis Doctor, and things are almost perfect in this new universe of theirs. (written for the angsty tumblr prompt, "I'm coming, just sit tight!") This version smut-free (but rated T for language/innuendo); find the nsfw version on tumblr, AO3, or Teaspoon under the same name!
1. merrily merrily merrily merrily

The other Doctor can't say it, but he can.

* * *

To say he often lets her take the lead on missions would be a lie. One doesn't _let_ Rose Tyler do anything; she just _does_.

The Doctor helps, of course—and certainly, sometimes he helps too much, or sometimes they fight, or sometimes he doesn't listen as well as he should, because old habits die hard, and his habits are very, very old—but once he gets used to it, it's actually refreshing, sailing in a ship with someone else at the helm, for once. He's been in control for such a very long time, and even if he would never admit it (and fortunately he never has to, because Rose never asks), it's nice to live without the feeling that the fate of the entire universe rests on his shoulders alone.

Not to mention, she simply knows this universe better than he does.

"Imagine that," Rose teases. "Someone knowing more about something than you do."

"I know. Isn't it lovely?"

She spares him a glance, grinning that one smile that drives him mad, the one with the littlest corner of her tongue poking out pinkly between her teeth, and he wants to kiss her, so he does. He leans over to press the briefest kiss to her lips, just a chaste touch of mouths and pressure, but even that is a bold enough gesture to send him reeling, new as this all is.

The Doctor draws back, and Rose could almost look unfazed, except for how glassy her eyes have gone.

"What was that for?" she asks.

"For you. And a little for me too, I suspect."

Rose pulls her gaze away from him as the rest of the team filters into the observatory, turning her attention back to the star charts on the desk in front of them, but her grin is a little wider now.

* * *

He doesn't know how their morning routine ended with her snogging him senseless against the door of the loo (it's such a surprise he truthfully almost can't be certain if it's real or a dream), but he's not about to complain. Rose tastes of sleep and spearmint and morning tea, her lips soft on his, her hands tangling in his hair. But somewhere in the cottage, the Doctor's mobile starts to ring, chiming out in an obnoxiously cheerful digital version of Clair de Lune.

Both of them pause, and the Doctor can practically hear the battle raging in Rose's head, desire and responsibility both clamoring for attention. But responsibility wins (as always, thinks the Doctor with only the smallest measure of disappointment), and Rose steps back with a sigh. The Doctor watches as she saunters away, hips swaying, and his hands curl and uncurl, feeling strangely empty.

* * *

"Huh," says the Doctor, twirling the blossom round and round between his fingers. Temporarily forgoing its usual blue shade, the forget-me-not glows ghostly green against his skin, illuminating it like the bulb of a firefly in the pale light of the moon. "So what, in your world, inspired France to engineer bioluminescent plants?"

"I think the better question is, why _not_ bioluminescent plants?"

Chuckling, the Doctor tucks the flower into his lapel, wearing it proudly like a corsage. "Why not, indeed?"

Rose sets her binoculars down, frowning. The Doctor would ask what's wrong, but he already knows: Torchwood intel estimated the gathering of extraterrestrials at six, maybe eight beings at most, but if the look on Rose's face is anything to go by, there are easily twice as many bodies coalescing in the factory across the street.

"Nervous?" the Doctor asks.

"No, but the team's a little smaller than I'd like, for what we'll be dealing with." Rose fiddles with a dial on the side of the binoculars. "I think the night vision's off on these. Take a look?"

The Doctor reaches over and plucks the binoculars out of his hand, pulling out the new sonic screwdriver so he can start up a scan. Rose is right (of course she is, not that he ever doubted); the binoculars aren't quite calibrated correctly. He sets the blue light of the sonic on one of the dials and adjusts to setting 14-b/ii.

Amidst the flashing blue light of the sonic, something red pops in his peripheral vision.

Startled, the Doctor turns his head to get a better look, but whatever it was—indeed, if it existed at all, and wasn't just his faulty human eyes playing tricks on him—it's gone. But it was probably nothing.

"It's environmentalism, by the way," Rose says.

The Doctor blinks. "Sorry?"

"The light-up plants. It was an environmentalist effort. Clean energy and all that."

"And they're very pretty," the Doctor replies, glancing at the plants glowing all around them on the rooftop, at the trees glowing in the darkness on the street below.

"And they're very pretty," Rose agrees. "Give the Trees of Cheem a run for their money, I reckon."

"Or maybe Cheem in this universe adopts a similar practice," the Doctor says, handing the binoculars back. "Maybe we'll find out someday."

Rose smiles.

"It's a date," she says.

* * *

The worst thing about being human, the Doctor thinks, is not the strictly linear progression of time, the compromised immune system and sensory input capabilities, or the slow decay of his body plodding along in nanometers and picoseconds. No. It's the dishes.

"It's easily the worst of the chores," he complains, even as he scrubs. "It's pointless. They're just going to get dirty again."

His mobile starts ringing in his pocket, buzzing against his hip, but he ignores it; his hands are too soap-and-suds-covered right now to do anything else. "Also, it's _boring_ ," the Doctor adds.

"You could try looking out the window," Rose suggests, her voice piping up from the table behind him.

The Doctor would much rather look at Rose, but the rustling of paper lets him know she just turned a page on her report, and is probably quite absorbed in it. Ten pages down, forty-two to go, and who on earth was stupid enough to invent such a horrid thing as _paperwork_ , anyway?

Suppressing a sigh, the Doctor looks up from the dish and sponge in his hands, peering through the window over the sink. Beyond the glass panes, through gauzy curtains, he sees the jewel-green expanse of Pete's garden, dotted purple here and there with budding phlox. Pete's mansion looms like a great hulking thing in the background.

"Yes, it's lovely," the Doctor says drily. "And about as entertaining as watching paint dry."

"Paint gets such a bad rap. Besides, can't you entertain yourself for five minutes?"

In response, the Doctor flicks a palmful of water over his shoulder, smiling when he hears the simultaneous _splat_ and Rose's cry of alarm.

"Do you know," he says, perfectly conversational as he sends another spray her way, "I think I can."

He jumps when a cold spatter of droplets hits the back of his neck. Whirling around, he finds Rose sitting much the same way she was the last time he looked, her face blank, eyes fixed on the report in front of her. But the water in her drinking glass wobbles suspiciously.

Grinning, the Doctor wets his fingers beneath the faucet, and flicks more water her way.

As soon as he's turned back around, a tiny deluge smacks him between the shoulderblades.

He throws more water over his shoulder.

Her glass rattles hollowly against the table and his shirt is wet again.

The Doctor dampens a paper towel and lobs it at her head.

Rose catches it without even looking and slowly her gaze travels up to meet his, her eyes glittering with something like fire.

(In a few seconds, he'll be laughing and running for his life.)

The Doctor gulps.

* * *

"What is it?" Rose asks, pausing just outside Torchwood Tower.

The Doctor realizes that he stopped midsentence, a healthy ramble desiccating along with his thoughts. "Nothing," he says, shaking himself, but his fingers tighten around hers.

He doesn't tell her about the red-haired woman he saw in the crowd.

* * *

It's not a terrible movie, but it isn't exactly a good one, either, and so the Doctor is grateful for a number of reasons when Rose offers a distraction in the form of sitting in his lap.

"What's this about?" he asks breathlessly, as if he doesn't know, as if he hasn't spent every night thinking about it, his fresh new human body filling his head with all sorts of deliciously wicked thoughts. Judging by the way Rose's teeth sink into her lower lip, the Doctor is willing to wager she's had some wicked thoughts of her own.

"I just wanted to know," she says, sliding forward until their hips meet, "how you would react if I did this."

He licks his lips, and her eyes flicker downward, drawn by the motion.

"Well," the Doctor says. His hands fly up to rest on her thighs, fingers drumming on the bare skin exposed by her pyjama shorts. Her legs are gorgeous to look at and even better to touch, silky-smooth here, downy-soft there, powerful muscles tense and firm just beneath the surface.

"Well," he says again, as if it's final.

Rose's brow furrows. "Too much?"

The Doctor shakes his head emphatically. It is, though, it's much too much, but not in the way she thinks—even if this body wasn't populated with billions of fresh and tender nerve endings, still young and inexperienced and wildly unpredictable, this would be quite a lot for him to process. Rose Tyler, in the same universe as him, in the same room, taking charge of missions and telling him to do chores and offering kisses as freely as candy and straddling his lap like she belongs there. She climbed the summit of his defenses and planted a flag at the top, "Property of Rose" emblazoned in proud bright gold letters. She has taken him for her own, and he quite likes it, being _taken._

That doesn't mean it isn't still terrifying.

"Just a bit," he admits, hating himself when he sees concern flicker across her face. "But we can still—I mean, I'd still like to…"

He leans forward to press a hard kiss against her lips and when he pulls back just far enough to see her reaction, she's flushed and grinning. God, she's beautiful like this.

(Well, she's always beautiful. But this is something new, and he never fails to appreciate that.)

* * *

They're running through the Scottish moorlands the next time he sees her.

The red-haired woman stands in stark contrast against the dull green grasses and dim grey sky. Her hair whips dramatically in the wind, her skirt winding and curling around the elegant towers of blue forget-me-nots blooming at her feet.

"Doctor!" Rose's voice bleeds in, finding the cracks between the Doctor's thoughts and the chaos of the howling wind. "They're right on our tail—we've got to keep moving!"

The Doctor wants to move, but his feet are lead weights and his gaze fixed.

"Doctor—"

The countryside a few meters away erupts in a blast, a hailstorm of pebbles and grass and mud raining down on him. The rest of the team throws up their hands to shield themselves, but the Doctor can't tear his gaze away from the woman on the plains. Another strike hits the hill, closer this time, and before the Doctor knows what's happening, Rose is yanking him to the ground.

Instinctively, the Doctor shields her body with his as he falls. Debris pelts his back, stinging him through his suit.

"Oh my god," Rose says, trapped beneath him and panicking as the Torchwood team ahead of them returns fire. "Are you all right? Did you get hit?"

Hesitating, unable to form words, the Doctor glances back over the moors.

The woman is gone.

"What is it?" Rose asks, placing a hand on his chest. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," the Doctor says hurriedly, blinking, shaking his head. He stands up, pulling Rose to her feet, and he ushers both of them along, throwing one last look over his shoulder for good measure.

"It's nothing," he says again.

* * *

The Doctor doesn't make a joke about Rose being barefoot in the kitchen, even if that's exactly what and where she is. Something about the comment seems too distasteful, somehow, even as a joke. It seems like an especially poor idea after everything that happened today—and he knows that if the broadcast is so loud that even _he_ picked up on that, then things are sour, indeed. So he walks up behind her instead, watching as she stirs a pot on the stove.

"Shall I fetch a fire extinguisher?" he asks mildly.

"Oi, that was one time," Rose replies, more than a little grumpy. " _One._ And if you're so much better at cooking, maybe you should give it a go."

"No, ta. I'll happily live off takeaway."

"I know you would. You think cooking's a waste of time. You think bloody everything's a waste of time."

"You're still angry at me."

"You think?"

The Doctor sighs. He fights the urge to roll his eyes. Even if her back is turned to him, Rose would sense it, somehow.

"I shouldn't have said those things back at the office," he says, even if he privately thinks that yes, he damn well should have, because he should be able to say whatever he wants; that's how it was before and he doesn't see how it should be any different now. "I'm sorry," he offers anyway.

"No, you're not. You don't think you did anything wrong. You're only saying what I want to hear."

The Doctor cringes. "Maybe," he admits.

After a few moments pass with no reply from Rose, the Doctor steps nearer, looping his arms around her stomach. He draws her into him, her back flush with his front, pulling her close.

"That's cheating," Rose complains, but he can feel her muscles easing.

"I know," he says. Then, with as much meaning as he can muster, "I'm sorry. I really am."

Rose is silent for a bit, the quiet air around them disrupted only with the occasional scrape of the spoon on the inside of the pot. The Doctor watches as she stirs, the stew swirling in a vortex of carrots and onions and peas, the motion constant and mesmerizing.

"I know this isn't what you wanted," Rose says, quietly interrupting his thoughts. "You were never keen on this whole domestic lot. A mortgage and a job and Torchwood and life on the slow path. It isn't exactly what I wanted, either."

The Doctor is tempted to point out that if that's the case, then she should understand his frustration, shouldn't she? But he wisely keeps his mouth shut.

"But I thought…I dunno." Rose brushes her hair out of her eyes. "Even if this isn't exactly what I hoped for, I'm still happy. I may not have everything I ever wanted, but I have you. And that's enough for me. You're enough for me. But sometimes I feel like you don't…"

Her voice dies out, but realization hits the Doctor all the same. Shame floods through him.

Tightening his arms around Rose, the Doctor buries his face in the crook of her neck. She smells like woman, like sweat and sweet and jasmine-scented soap. He closes his eyes, just breathing her in.

"You're enough for me," he says, his voice muffled and damp against her shoulder. "Even if I'm not good at saying it, even if I'm an ass, sometimes. You're what I want, Rose. You're all I want."

He draws in a deep breath. "I love you."

Rose freezes, the spoon in her hand buoyed by the stew seething around it. She turns around to look at the Doctor, twisting in his arms, and the expression on her face is strange. She almost looks shocked.

"What?" the Doctor asks, laughing a little uneasily. "It's not like I've never said it before."

Opening her mouth to speak, Rose seems to think better of it, throwing her arms around him instead.

They stand in the kitchen for a long while, arms wrapped around each other while Rose's feet go red from cold and the stew on the stove slowly scalds.

* * *

This isn't quite the worst place he has ever darted into, the Doctor thinks as he runs through the warehouse, his plimsolls slapping loudly over the warped linoleum. But with its dark hallways, damp drafty air, hole-ridden ceilings drip-drip-dripping, and glass-covered floors crunching unpleasantly underfoot, the abandoned warehouse is certainly _trying_. Of course, it doesn't help matters that the space between the Doctor's atlas and axis vertebrae is throbbing, reminding him constantly in red-hot spurts of the wound he just sustained, but regardless of that, this warehouse is just filthy. Don't alien squatters have any standards, anymore?

Rose pulls him around a corner and the two of them wait for a moment, catching their breath. The Doctor watches as Rose looks over her weapon, checking its gauge for the fourth time in as many minutes. It isn't a deadly weapon, or rather, it shouldn't be, but it can still pack quite the nasty punch, and Rose is rightfully cautious about it.

Rose's head jerks up at the sound of fluttering just down the hall, feathery-leathery wings echoing softly throughout the empty warehouse, and the Doctor watches as her brow furrows in concentration, her grip on her weapon tightening.

"Right," she says, her voice dropped to a threadbare whisper, "no heroics this time around. I'm positioned between you and the Morpheus Drones at all times."

Craning her head, she checks out the bandage slapped hastily over the back of the Doctor's neck. "I won't have you getting stung again," Rose says. "Understand?"

The Doctor nods, and Rose's eyes narrow in suspicion, and they both know this is one of those _sometimes_ when he won't listen.

Rose sighs.

"Right," she whispers, cocking her weapon. "Let's go."

* * *

The Doctor catches her eye from across the crowded room, and through the sea of high-level operatives and charming debutantes and important officials, all of them laughing and chatting and buzzing like a swarm of well-dressed bees, he can see her grinning at him. Flickering candlelight glints off Rose's hair and the tiny crystals of her gown and the moonstones adorning her neck and ears, dripping off her like melting ice. The sight of her warms him even more than the champagne in his hand, fizzing up drunkenly in his head until his cheeks flush and the room starts to spin.

He wonders if she feels the same way when she looks at him. He thinks maybe he should find out.

"Excuse me," he says to his conversation partner, whomever he may be—a president, the Doctor thinks absently, or maybe a king—and he pushes his champagne glass into the man's hands before stepping away, ignoring the way the man splutters indignantly in his wake.

He approaches Rose with every intent of pulling her away but their team mobs him first, half of them already drunk on champagne and wine and whatever other fancy poncy things Pete and Jackie bought for this gala, and they're all chanting something about drinks and a toast and a pub, and that's how the Doctor finds himself in downtown London, in some hole-in-the-wall place he's never heard of, at two in the morning, pretending to down shots with Jake and Ripley and the rest, all of them in their tuxes and gowns still, watching Rose and the other ladies dance to some thunderous club beat that thumps so loudly, the Doctor thinks he may never extract it from his skull.

Rose laughs with her teammates, dancing with wild abandon in her beautiful new gown and jewels in this dirty old pub, and the music pounds and patrons sing and Jake whoops and feet stomp and glasses clink and the Doctor can't think of anything but her.

Snagging one shot (just one, for courage), the Doctor swallows it in one go (and ignores Ripley's resounding cheer) before wading onto the dance floor. He makes some excuse to their teammates—official business, terribly urgent, something paranormal's attacking the Queen, or the Prime Minister, or any of the things that this England hasn't got—and Rose allows him to pull her away, giggles as he leads her out of the churning crowd.

In the lamplit street outside the pub, the Doctor draws her in for a kiss.

Rose gasps in surprise, but warms up to the idea quickly, her hands fisting in his tuxedo jacket. Heat blossoms in the Doctor's chest, spreading everywhere from his fingertips to his toes. Giddiness bubbles up in his head, makes him kiss harder, clutching her fast to himself.

He was wrong—she doesn't make him feel the same way champagne does, or even a shot. Rose is infinitely more intoxicating.

"Let's go home," the Doctor says. He half-expects her to protest—their teammates are waiting for them, they're going to receive a toast later, everyone they know is here, everyone will talk—but when he draws back to gauge her response, her pupils are huge and black, and the corners of her mouth turn up in a lazy smile.

She nods.

* * *

Startling them awake sometime in the late morning—or maybe the early afternoon; who knows, who cares?—the Doctor's mobile chirps loudly, its shrill ring screeching a hole through the quiet.

The Doctor watches through a sleepy-cotton haze as Rose fishes around on the floor next to the bed, rifling through a pile of discarded clothes until she finds his trousers. She locates the mobile in his pocket and promptly turns the thing off, chucking it against the wall for good measure.

"Who was it?" the Doctor asks with a great yawn.

"Dunno. Doesn't matter."

"Might've been work."

Rose rolls back over in bed, until she's pressed up against him. Her body curls around his, softening the lean lines and hard edges of his limbs with her gentle curves.

"Doesn't matter," she says, this time with a grin like a Cheshire Cat.

* * *

Hours later, half-asleep, and he can still taste her on his lips, feel her buzzing in his bloodstream like fine liquor.

Rose stretches next to him and he watches, open and unabashed. The elegant curve of her spine, the tension in her calf muscles, the bare expanse of her torso lit gold by sunset, set aglow in the dying light; his eyes travel over everything, drinking it all in the way he's always wanted to. His stomach grumbles, but he doesn't want to move away, preferring instead to bask in syrupy warmth.

"Aren't you tired?" Rose asks, eyes fluttering lazily open.

"From what? The mission or the pub? Or everything that came after?"

"All of it," she says with a slow smile. "Everything."

The Doctor shakes his head, and they both know it's a lie.

"I am a bit peckish, though," the Doctor admits, and no sooner have the words left his mouth than a resounding three knocks start booming at the front door.

Rose and the Doctor glances at each other, and she shrugs. "Are we expecting anyone?"

"Must be the takeaway," the Doctor says, rolling over in the bed. He snatches his pants and trousers off the floor, tugging them up over his legs and hips in a funny little hop-skip-jump out of the room.

"Takeaway?" he hears Rose ask uncertainly behind him, but he doesn't think much of it; he's far too busy scanning the area for a shirt to throw on. No sense in scaring the poor delivery person with surprise nudity, even if he _is_ a pinnacle of manly excellence.

"Be right there!" the Doctor shouts when a flurry of knocks at the front door sound off again, each solid rap echoing through the entire house. Eying the pile of clean laundry heaped haphazardly on the sofa, the Doctor spots one of his oxfords crumpled on top—good enough, or it'll have to do, anyway—and he pushes his arms through the sleeves.

Three more knocks, and the Doctor rolls his eyes. "Just give me a moment," he says loudly, and only a little irritably, fishing around in his trouser-pockets and frantically scoping out the room. He whirls around to ask Rose if she happens to know where the hell he dropped his wallet (silly things, wallets; he's fairly certain they only exist to tuck themselves out of sight as much as possible), and there she is.

Rose Tyler. Standing right behind him. Wearing his abandoned tuxedo shirt. And little, if anything, else.

(Also, she holds his wallet out for him, but he's so dumbfounded by the sight of her in his shirt that his brain sort of short-circuits.)

"Go on," Rose laughs, waving the wallet for him to take, and is she blushing just the littlest bit beneath his gaze? Oh, she most certainly is, and he can feel his own cheeks warming in response, heat spreading down beneath his collar. She did this on _purpose_ , the little minx.

"Good look?" Rose asks, tongue trapped between her teeth in a grin.

The Doctor nods as he takes the wallet from her, smiling stupidly like some kind of drunken idiot. " _Very_ good."

He leans in for a kiss but the moment is ruined by more knocking at the door. This time four hollow thumps thunder throughout the house.

"Good grief. All right, I'm coming," the Doctor says impatiently. "Just sit tight!"

Grumbling under his breath (couldn't they have just delivered this to him in bed, did he need to tip them if they were being so rude, did they tip delivery drivers in the UK or was that just the States, did he have enough cash for a tip anyway, and since when did deliver drivers become so pushy?), the Doctor crosses the room, unlocks the door, and pulls it open to reveal not some pimply little teenager like he expected, but a woman.

A red-haired woman.

An impossible woman…

"Finally," says Donna, removing her mobile from her ear and turning it off. She tucks it in her pocket. "I've been trying to get through to you for ages."

The Doctor's blood rushes from his head, his pulse skipping a few critical beats. He stumbles backward, his wallet slipping from his hands. It lands with an impossibly loud _thud_.

"Hello, Doctor," says Donna, and now, her voice is as sad as her smile. "You need to wake up."


	2. life is a but a dream

"This is ridiculous," he says angrily, jaw clenching. He paces about the dining room table, fingers twisted in his hair, chest heaving. "This is a trick, that's all. It's a trick, or—or—someone laced the drinks at the pub, or it's some kind of post-metacrisis hallucination, or it's a dream—"

"It _is_ a dream," Donna tells him, and something about her gentle tone makes him want to throttle her. The initial shock of her appearance has dulled enough that the way she keeps talking to him, like he's some kind of wild animal she needs to soothe, some kind of dangerous snarling _thing_ , is driving him batty. "You're dreaming right now, Doctor, that's what I'm trying to tell you—"

"You're wrong," the Doctor shoots back. "I would know if this wasn't real, I would _know_ it."

"Doctor," Donna says patiently, and since when is she so stoic and reasonable? The Doctor would much prefer it if she shouted and stomped her feet, but she's just standing there, solid and resolute and damnably calm. "Don't you think the fact that I'm right here, right now, sort of proves that something is wrong?"

"Donna, it's not that I'm not happy to see you, but—"

"But don't you remember, Doctor? You were hurt. You got stung. You were on a mission for Torchwood, and one of the Morpheus Drones—"

A flash of memory hits him, unbidden, and pain throbs at the base of his skull.

"Wait," the Doctor breathes.

He steps back, shaking his head. "Wait. No. I did get stung, but it was a minor injury. Healed like that." The Doctor snaps his fingers for emphasis, to show just how quick _like that_ is. Laughing, he looks to Rose for reassurance, for backup, but she's oddly quiet, watching everything unfold from her seat at the table.

"This is preposterous," the Doctor announces. "I'm sorry. Like I said, Donna, I'm glad to see you, absolutely thrilled that you're all right, but I can't just—"

"Please, I know it's hard to hear—"

"You can't reasonably expect me to accept this claim at face value. You can't—"

"Doctor."

"—just march in here, out of nowhere, and expect me to believe that—"

"Doctor, you know something is wrong—"

"No. I don't want to hear it!"

"It doesn't matter if you want to hear it or not," Donna snaps back, drawing herself up to her full height. She's still significantly shorter than him, but something about her fills the room, makes him flinch away, and _that's_ the Donna he remembers. "It's the bloody truth!"

Donna's hands ball into fists and her lips purse together in a thin line. "You think I want to tell you any of this?" she asks, her voice wavering. "You think I want to be the one breaking it to you, that your happy little bubble here is made out of nothing? Not even something as substantial as a spiderweb—just pure nothing? That your synapses are degrading, your body is dying, and all of this sentimental rot is just your brain throwing one last hurrah before the toxins shut it down?"

( _He's watching a mediocre film, and halfway through—_ )

"Stop," the Doctor says, his head swimming.

"I haven't got a choice, Doctor," Donna pleads. "This is your body's last-ditch effort to reason with you. It knows you won't listen to yourself—god knows you've ignored all the signs, every other effort—but it's hoping you'll listen to me, what's left of me inside your head. But you already know something's off. You've known it for ages."

( _His mobile rings, and either Rose was just kissing him, or he was just having the most wonderful dream—_ )

"No, Donna. Please—"

"You know something's wrong, you know this isn't real—"

"Shut up!" the Doctor shouts, covering his ears. "Please, for goodness' sake, shut up!"

"You know I'm telling the truth!" Donna shouts over him, pounding the table. "C'mon, Spaceman! Get it through your thick head! How else would I be here, eh? You know there aren't any cracks left between the universes, and you sure as hell know there isn't any Donna Noble in this world. You _know_ , you _checked_ , you _looked_. And then you looked again. There's no Donna Noble here, not even a hint, not even a cell of the woman that you knew back in your own universe. So how would I be here if any of this was real? Hmm?"

She bangs the table again. " _How_?"

( _"Aren't you tired?" she asks, and_ —)

Tearing himself away, the Doctor turns back to Rose, hands wide open in a request for any kind of help she can offer, but she is just as silent as she has been throughout the entire conversation, sitting quiet and still. Draped in his shirt, several sizes too large for her, she looks strangely small.

The Doctor gathers up the pieces of his dignity. He can do this. He can get through this. He can do it for her.

"Say I believe you," he says to Donna, breathing heavily. "Say you're right. How much of this is a dream? How much of this have I made up in the last few hours, or days, or however long since I got stung?"

He steels himself. "How do I know what's real, and what's not?"

Donna heaves a sigh in frustration. "I mean, I don't need to tell you how this works. They're basically the same as the Morpheus Drones back in our own universe; this is all your knowledge I'm drawing from. You already know all of it."

"Remind me."

"Fine," Donna says with a _hmph_. "The Morpheus toxin targets your autonomic nervous system, _as you know_ , and you lapse into a coma. But this toxin is clever. In an attempt to camouflage itself, keep your body from finding it and fighting back, it overstimulates your neurotransmitters, flooding your brain with dopamine. So your head comes up with all these happy dreams, happy thoughts, happy memories, or…"

Donna pauses. "…or sad memories modified to be happy."

( _He's terribly bored doing the dishes, but he doesn't have to be—_ )

The Doctor drags both of his hands over his face. "It's affecting my memories?" he asks weakly. "But it can't have. Surely I'm not so human now that I can't tell memories from dreams."

"All while you're thinking happy thoughts, your autonomic nervous system is slowly shutting down," Donna continues. "If you don't wake up in time, your body just stops working. Your brain dies. But you're so happy you don't want to wake up. It's literally killing you with kindness, Doctor."

"You still haven't answered my question," the Doctor says stubbornly. "If what you're saying is true—and that's a big _if_ , mind—how do I know the difference between my dreams and my memories? How do I know what's real?"

Picking nervously at the cuff of her jacket-sleeve, Donna stalls for time, suddenly nervous. "You're not going to like the answer," she says.

The Doctor's brow quirks impatiently. He gestures for her to continue.

Donna swallows. "Think about it," she says, her words slow. "There's one thing here that doesn't make sense. One thing, out of all your memories, that's out of place. One thing that doesn't belong."

Heavy silence follows in the wake of her pronouncement; the air is thick and still.

"Oh god," pipes up a small voice. "It's me."

* * *

The Doctor pales. He turns back to Rose, still sitting at the table; her hands are clenched tight and her eyes stare, unseeing.

"It's got to be me," Rose whispers. "I'm not real."

"Don't be stupid," the Doctor hisses at her, slamming the bedroom door shut behind him. "Of course you're real."

"What if I'm not, though?" Rose argues softly, walking around the room as if in a daze. "Not like this, anyway."

A single hysterical peal of laughter escapes before the Doctor can stop it, teeth clamping together like a vice. "I can't believe this. What's gotten into you? Why would you even say that?"

Rose shrugs. "It's just…it makes a kind of sense, is all."

The Doctor grabs her by the shoulders, looking deep into her eyes. "No. You're real, Rose. As real as anything. Donna—or the thing out there that looks like Donna—could be completely wrong about what's going on. There's nothing that guarantees she's right, nothing that proves she is what she says she is, nothing at all. All right?"

Rose averts her gaze and the Doctor's hands slide up to frame her face, forcing her to look at him.

"Please," he says, and god, he really has changed if he's going to let himself openly beg like this.

She trembles under his touch. "Donna said something didn't belong here. Doctor…it's got to be me."

Drawing in a sharp breath to calm himself (it doesn't work, his heart is still racing like he just ran a bloody marathon, and this stupid human body will quit on him if he keeps this up), the Doctor lets go of her, stepping away. He pinches the bridge of his nose. Legs gone wibbly, he sits down on the bed. He counts to ten, not because he thinks it will work, but because he hasn't got any better ideas.

"I was so determined to get back to the other universe," Rose says, and her voice is hollow. She sounds impossibly far away. "I didn't let anything stop me. Not Mum, not Pete, not Torchwood regulations or red tape, not the laws of physics, not mathematical impossibility. I didn't even let the walls between universes keep me away. So why am I here?"

( _He watches the targets through a cover of bioluminescent plants and trees, and thinks a trip to Cheem would be a good date if she was—_ )

"What if this version of me is just a side-effect of the toxin, and I don't know any better? What if this is just your brain working me into your memories, making them happier, giving you what you want before you die? What if I never came back to this universe at all…what if I'm gone?"

( _The kitchen floor is cold and the stew is scalding and she's all he wants, and he wishes he could tell her—_ )

"You're not," the Doctor insists quietly. "You're here, with me. You chose me."

"Maybe I didn't."

The Doctor looks up and her face is blurry. He blinks moisture out of his eyes, damming the tears back before they have a chance to fall. Rose swims back into view in his periphery, sitting next to him on the bed, and he wonders how she would be able to leave an indent in the duvet, how her fair skin could strike such a contrast against the blood-red poppy print, how her body could be so warm next to his, if she wasn't real.

"You said I was enough for you," he hears himself tell her. "You said you were happy."

"And you are, and I am," she replies. "But…can you remember? What really happened, the day we came back here?"

( _He wants to kiss her so badly, and all he has to do is—_ )

He shakes his head, both _no_ and _please don't tell me_.

"I asked you what you said," Rose says, curling her fingers around his, where they fist in the bedclothes. "I asked you what you were going to say to me, that day on the beach."

A flash of color pops into the Doctor's head, greys and pinks painted in lazy watercolor strokes, and he tastes the salt on the air, hears the crashing of waves, sees Rose's face, cautious but hopeful.

( _The other Doctor won't say it, but he will._ )

"I just needed to know you weren't going to leave me again," Rose says, tears glittering in the corners of her eyes. "I would have stayed, I would have chosen you, if you'd just told me."

"And I did," he says insistently. "I told you what I was going to say. I said it. I've said it a hundred times since. _I love you_."

Rose shakes her head. "Maybe in another timeline, Doctor. Maybe in a dream."

( _Won't he?_ )

With a sick feeling, he realizes _he doesn't remember_.

(He watches the TARDIS disappear)

( _and looks over star charts_ )

( _and takes the lead on missions_ )

( _and he cooks and he washes and he wishes_ )

( _and the movie wouldn't be half so bad if someone just watched it with him_ )

( _and the expanse of bed next to him is still and vast and cold_ )

( _and the cottage is so empty for all the reminders of her that still exist everywhere_ )

( _and he wonders if she could ever be truly happy with the other him, in the other universe_ )

(and his hands curl and uncurl, feeling strangely empty)

"No," the Doctor says, pulling away from her. He backs away, smacking into the bedside table so hard that its contents rattle, his eyes blown wide.

"Doctor, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry—"

He pushes past her out of the room.

* * *

It doesn't take long for Donna—or the part of his subconscious that looks like Donna, or a trick that looks like Donna, or a nightmare—to find him sitting out in the garden, staring emptily at a nightingale perched on the gate, twirling a blue forget-me-not between his fingers.

(Have these flowers ever grown out here before? His stomach sinks because he just doesn't know.)

"Do me a favor," Donna says, fanning out her jacket before she sits on the ground next to him, "and button up that shirt. Nobody wants to see that chest, Casanova."

"So this is it," the Doctor says bitterly. "This is my choice, according to you—stay in here, stay happy for however long I've got—days, hours, minutes—or wake up, and have nothing, and no one. Die happy with my false memories of Rose, or live cold, and miserable, and alone."

"That's it, I'm afraid. You can't stay in this world, Doctor. I'm sorry."

The Doctor's fingers close around the flower, and the petals bruise beneath his grasp.

"Or," he says, "maybe there's an entirely viable third option here."

"Oh?"

"Perhaps you're right, and I'm dreaming," the Doctor replies thoughtfully. He considers for a moment. "Well, there's no _maybe_ about it; clearly, something is wrong right now, because you're here, and my memories are all muddy, and Rose has gone just a bit existentially mad. But there's nothing that shows I've been dreaming as much as you say. Nothing proves that the Morpheus toxin dreamed up Rose for me."

He scratches the back of his neck, winces when his fingernails graze the still-fresh wound there. "Hell, for all I know, this could be affecting Rose, too," he continues. "If memory serves—and it usually does—telepathy throws the Drones' process off a bit. I could be projecting my dream to Rose, whether I want to or not. That would certainly explain her confusion. It would also explain her self-awareness—after all, what good is a hallucination if it doesn't think it's real?"

"Fair point," Donna says, but her eyes are narrowed in suspicion.

"The fact of the matter is, there's no reason for me to believe that the last few months didn't happen exactly the way I think they did. Everything I thought, everything I remembered, before you came along and threw a wrench in the works, could be 100% accurate. Or at least, everything up until I got stung. I could wake up right now, in this world or another, and everything could be fine. Because when it comes down to it, there's only one real anomaly."

He doesn't look at her. "Donna…the only thing that truly doesn't belong here is you."

Donna frowns. "I suppose you're technically right, but, Doctor…are you really willing to take that chance?"

The Doctor's fists tightens, and the flower in his hand crumples, oozing something sickly blue over his skin.

* * *

He finds Rose where he left her, sitting on their bed. She looks up when he approaches, eyes searching his face.

Pausing, the Doctor looks her over. He drinks everything in—and wonders if she's doing the same—cataloguing everything from her hands (tight and white-knuckled on her knees) to her nails (bitten short) to her hair (cornsilk-pale, darker at the roots, due a touch-up soon) to her lips (pink, full) to her eyes (whiskey-colored, shining; surely he couldn't dream up anything comparable) and everything outside and in-between. And he very adamantly doesn't tell himself it's _just in case_.

Wordlessly, the Doctor climbs into bed, and Rose moves with him, inching back until her head hits her pillow. Rose pulls the duvet over them both; the instant she's done, the Doctor draws her into his arms, wrapping himself around her tightly, as snug as he can. The embrace is so close, it's surely uncomfortable for them both, but he doesn't care, and when her arms cinch tightly around him in return, he suspects she doesn't care either. He closes his eyes and loses himself in the deep swell and fall of her breathing, the scent of her hair, the warmth of her exhales on his neck. Her heart gently pitter-patters beneath his fingertips, drumming solidly behind her ribs; he almost imagines he can feel it beating in his own chest, a second pulse beating in time with his own.

* * *

He wakes up.


End file.
